Phnom Penh. To be honest, this name never popped up on my radar as a desirable place to go but as we were reading up on Cambodia with our plans to visit Angkor, it sounded as if Phnom Penh was really quite a funky city on a happy rebound, with a vibrant community, great restaurants and a good vibe, so we book ourselves into a cute little boutique hotel with a cool looking roof terrace in the centre of town. The location of the Patio really is unbeatable, right by the Cambodian-Vietnamese friendship monument. Since we arrive quite early in the morning, we have time for a good stroll down the promenade, trying to hunt down a chilled coconut which we do not find, but come across a restaurant specialized in shark: soup, fins, BBQ, you name it 😡. We also come across one with the best sales pitch we have yet seen: “Mysterious spicy food from China” – at least you can’t reproach them lack of transparency!
The sun is burning down and we are starting to feel the effects of our short night, but right before the Royal Palace we find a fabulous playground, the site of which, that evening, will become the “birthplace” of a big friendship. Priority now is to get lunch, so we hop into our tuk tuk and head over to Eleven One Kitchen, which will become one of our favorite hang outs the days to come. The menu brims with tasty choices – and the walls with colourful philosophy – and we go a bit overboard with all that we order, but everything is simply delicious. And stunning. The avocado summer rolls and the mango summer rolls stuffed with fragrant mint and coriander, and a lunch set of Mushroom Tom Yam soup and a Green Apple salad with Sweet Potato Cake.
Cambodia is known for its selection of insect snacks and Vyas is keen to discover them so he orders a red tree ant salad. I was expecting a crunchy “ant sprinkle” but instead they are rather mushy and without any particular flavor profile. That’s a check we don’t necessarily need to repeat.
Back to the hotel for a little dip in the rooftop pool which is really pretty and instagram perfect but not intended for little kids wanting to splash around so, sensing some pent up energy, it’s time to chase the kids out of the hotel again, down the promenade, direction playground. I had read about how, every evening at dusk, people gather at different spots around town for a collective aerobics session and here we get to see one: blaring pop music and 4 rows of 5-6 people imitating the teacher’s (??) jumps and dance moves. Brilliant. Next to them a circle of middle-aged men playing a hackysack style game, passing a handball-sized rattan ball to each other in pretty impressive kungfu style leg kicks. A little further on, a group of teenage boys playing football around the monument. I’m already loving the flair of this city.
Arrived at the playground, the children approach two girls who appear to be twins, asking them if they would like to join in a round of wolf tag. The girls agree and so, from this moment onward until we get into our taxi to leave for Siam Reap 4 days later, the kids become practically inseparable. The girls are indeed twins, Reaksa and Reaksmey. They are 11 years old, bubbly and sweet and their mother, Naryda, who had just left the playground for a few minutes to get dinner, is just as charming. They insist on sharing their dinner of green curry rice noodles with us, which everyone devours, it is so tasty, and as the night is now fully settled in at after 8pm, we only manage to separate everyone once we have agreed to meet again the next day.
The next morning, we have a local guide pick us up to take us around town. We start off with the Royal Palace, and then debate whether or not we can take the children to the Khmer Rouge heritage sites, the Killing Fields and the Genocide museum in Prison 21. We decide against the Killing Fields, but for the Genocide Museum which is, needless to say, a sobering, heartbreakingly sad testimony to the absolute worst a human can be. Beyond the commonly known cruelty and horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime from 1975-’79, I am quite surprised to realise just how little I know about the background of the rise of the regime – and the role Western governments have played in it -, but even less so about the horrible hypocritical plight the Cambodian people suffered for the following 15+ years.
The next stop on our tour is a much happier one – we drive out to the silk farm island. This comes with the added bonus of taking the ferry across the Mekong, and gives us the opportunity to discover the local speciality Nom Ansom Chek – coconut sticky rice with banana barbequed in a banana leaf. For 2000 KHR (Riel) – the eqivalent of 0.5USD – we get our 4 packets of piping hot, crunchy on the outside, smooth on the inside Saom Ang which Vyas declares his new favorite snack and which even Anjali – who says that bananas are her personal nemesis – cannot resist. Really yummy. At the silk farm we discover how silk worms are grown, how they are boiled to extract the silk, and the beautiful art and skill of silk weaving.
We finish our tour with lunch and ask Lena, our guide, to introduce us to a typical local dish. She takes us to a little side street in town, where we see 3 women working over coal fires, making giant crêpes over some, and rice pancake “balls” over others. This little dig is named after its speciality dish, Bhan Chhev. You peel off a piece of this giant rice crêpe (that you fill to your liking, in our case, bean sprouts), place it on a salad leaf with some cucumbers, wrap it up and dip it all into a delicious light and fresh peanut satay sauce – a true delight!
Our next meet up with our friends is at the Than’s house, south of town. There is a water park close to their home which the girls want to show our kids and thereafter they generously invite us to stay on for dinner. The pool really is a kid’s dream come true, with several water slides, fountains and blaring pop music. Everyone has a massive blast and, well fatigued, could probably knock out into bed right away, but first the Ts prepare a scrumptious meal of freshly caught river shrimp and grilled fish for us. Thierry joins us for dinner – and an unexpected local beer degustation. Thankfully the girls’ English is excellent, as is Naryda’s which allow us to understand a little of the Than’s interesting history, even if the language barrier does not allow us to exchange at the level of nuance we would have liked. Naryda was a little girl at the time of the Khmer Rouge regime and she tells us how, as she and her sister were living in the countryside once her family got expelled from the city, she disobeyed and was sent off for “re-education” and a probable sure death. As she and a group of others were walked away to their punishment, Naryda – only 6 years old with a tiny, undernourished frame – managed to hide first behind a tree trunk, then climb up into the tree where she subsequently hid for 3 days without food or water. Besides all the suffering and pain, this country also harbours so many admirable stories of resilience and strength. Today, the T. family is working through another challenge: Mr T. was the undersecretary of the country’s main opposition party, but the ruling party apparently decided that they had had enough discussions so they forbade all opposition and expelled the party leaders into exile, while the second rank leadership such as Mr Than was left without permission to work for a year and Naryda, a hotel management employee for the past 20 years, demoted to second rank assistant. They had to sell their house, take the children out of school and are now mostly relieved that they feel they do not need to worry for their physical safety anymore. You wouldn’t know of any such concerns though, because this family radiates joy and bestows their kindness on all of us so generously.
The next morning we have a Street Art and Breakfast Tour booked. Our lovely guide whisks us off to the local market where she explains to us that the reason there are so so many fresh fruit and veggie markets dotted around town and that they are buzzing all day long is that most Cambodians don’t have a fridge. Instead they just buy what they need for their upcoming meal and head back out to shop for the next one when it’s time. Another great concept that not only guarantees absolute freshness but also, I imagine, a lot less waste. We start off with a deep-fried, sesame coated sweet beignet that is filled with a salty mung bean paste, Nom Kroch – a bit heavy to kick off the morning, but undoubtedly delicious. Right next to this stand, a lady making delightfully fluffy coconut waffles. These are an instant hit and we have to literally pull the kids away to get into the market. As always, I just love, love, love vegetable markets: the colors, the variety…. here, of course, we also have fish and meat on display which assaults the nose a bit more, and makes the ground a bit slippery as some of the fish will not stay in their tiny basin but hop out and skid across our feet…. We discover Longan, another lychee like variety which is, however, fortunately easier to peel and a little fleshier than its more known sister but just as delicious, sweet noodles with Thai basil and more until it is time to hop back into the tuk tuk and discover the local street art scene. Our guide does a great job explaining the stories behind the artwork and behind the artists and the ambiance in the back alleys with orange-cloaked monks strolling by is unquestionably unique. Sadly, Vyas and I need to break off the tour too early, because Monsieur, in his by now signature gesture of signalling fatigue, starts to throw up. So we head back to the hotel for a rest, but the other three get to benefit from the last part of the tour a bit further out of town with some great pieces.
That evening everyone is a bit tired so we only briefly meet up with our friends and instead decide to spend the following afternoon, a Saturday, together. They want to show us their favorite play space in the local mall, which turns into my personal nightmare (essentially a giant, earsplitting video game hall) but which the kids enjoy. An hour and half later we manage to pull everyone away for a last wolf tag and a chilled beer on the playground, then it is time to say goodbye. The sweetest of gestures: the T. family come all the way out on Sunday morning to bid us farewell at the hotel. Phnom Penh is, without a doubt, a cool city. But what made these days special for us was this new friendship and we will all cherish these memories as a highlight of our trip!
